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Pricey New Leica Camera Has Built-In Defense Against AI (Maria)
The author writes, “On Thursday, Leica Camera released the first camera that can take pictures with automatically encrypted metadata and provide features such as an editing history. The company believes this system, called Content Credentials, will help photojournalists protect their work and prove authenticity in a world riddled with AI-manipulated content. Leica’s M11-P can store each captured image with Content Credentials. … Content Credentials, announced in October, includes encrypted metadata detailing where and when the photo was taken and with what camera and model.”
So Biden’s a No-Show on the New Hampshire Primary Ballot. What Happens Next? (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “President Joe Biden wasn’t successful in unseating New Hampshire from the first-in-the-nation primary slot it has held for more than a century, but his decision not to appear on the state’s 2024 primary ballot has nonetheless added a new wrinkle to the contest and created complications for his campaign, state election officials and voters.”
After ‘Glimmer of a Moment,’ Mississippi Once Again Shuts Out Aspiring Voters (Dana)
From Bolts: “Mississippi has one of the nation’s harshest disenfranchisement systems. Nearly all states take away voting rights for some period of time after a felony, but the vast majority restore them when people are released from prison or complete their sentence. In Mississippi, though, people who are convicted of any of 23 categories of charges lose their voting rights for life. (People convicted of felonies that aren’t on that list don’t lose their rights.) According to an analysis conducted by the Sentencing Project, a national research and advocacy organization, roughly 240,000 Mississippians were barred from voting as of the 2022 midterms; that’s nearly 11 percent of the state’s voting-age population, the highest rate in the nation.”
US Asks Qatar to ‘Turn Down the Volume’ of Al Jazeera News Coverage (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has reportedly asked Qatar to moderate Al Jazeera’s coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas, amid concerns within the Biden administration that the channel is inflaming public opinion and heightening the risks of a wider conflict.”
Why I Just Quit DSA (Gerry)
The author writes, “My membership in [Democratic Socialists of America] ended [when] I resigned from the organization via an e-mail. I left to protest the DSA leadership’s politically and morally bankrupt response to the horrific Hamas October 7 anti-Jewish pogrom that took the lives of 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and saw over 200 hostages carried off to Gaza, both groups of victims including children and infants.”
In a Warming World, Hunger Stalks Guatemala’s Mayan Highlands (Laura)
From Reuters: “As much as a quarter of Guatemala’s population — up to 4.6 million people — suffered food shortages over the past year, the highest rate since a system called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that generates data for the U.N. began projections for the whole of Guatemala in 2018. The crisis has coincided with worsening extremes of rainfall and temperature, the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a period of political instability marked by the fight against corruption. … There is growing consensus that crop damage from climate change is among the complex reasons for food shortages, and migration decisions, in Guatemala.”
Spider, Exoskeleton Removed From Patient’s Ear (Mili)
From MedPage Today: “A 64-year-old woman presented to the otolaryngology clinic at a Taiwanese hospital because she’d been hearing abnormal sounds in her left ear for 4 days. She told doctors there that she’d felt a creature moving in her ear, and heard ‘beating, clicking, and rustling sounds.’”
